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Several conservative drug-war supporters in the House joined a brief in support of a limitless reading of Congress’s Commerce Clause power in the Raich case but have since denounced the application of that power in Obamacare — the unintended consequence of a shortsighted focus on maximizing drug enforcement

Heavy sigh.

The Commerce Clause is a double-edged sword: Conservatives cannot wield it in the drug war without making it a useful tool for advancing progressive visions of federal power.

I have been pointing this fact out here for 12 years. The "reasonable" regulation allowed for in the Heller case may well at some point allow the govt. to disarm everyone by "regulating" ammo or firing pins ect. The 40 billion dollar a year war on Pot smokers have not reduced supply, demand or even raised the price of marijuana. Conservatives and liberals alike are guilty of shredding the Bill of Rights to advance a mindless, hopeless war on a fairly benign weed.

The author of this piece is an idiot. The result in Raich was determined by Wickard v. Filburn. Until the Court is prepared to overturn that Depression era case there can be no serious argument about whether Federal power under the Commerce Clause extends to growing agricultural commodities for private, intrastate use. Nobody expanded government power to make room for the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs merely took advantage of long-established (albeit erroneous)Supreme Court precedent. The author is trying to say that conservatives are hoist with their own petard here, and that's just stupid.

He is also trying to say that Raich somehow supports the claim that the individual health insurance mandate is constitutional and that's even stupider. The acknowledged power of the federal government to regulate the intrastate production of agricultural commodities tells us nothing about whether the feds have the power to compel people to buy a service they don't want. The Court made a mistake when it said that growing something for your own use affected commerce enough to trigger federal power under the Commerce Clause. But that mistake doesn't compel the conclusion that the feds can force us into the marketplace for health insurance. Far from it. Obamacare presents a very different issue and Raich will be a marginal precedent at best in the legal battle over the individual mandate. How does ingnorant crap like this get published at NRO?